The present invention relates to file management, and more specifically, this invention relates to performing nearline storage of one or more files within a file storage system.
Currently, when a file is archived, data and metadata associated with the file are removed from online storage and stored on offline storage in an attempt to reduce file storage total cost of ownership (TCO). When files are archived in offline storage, an inventory is maintained to store the metadata within the offline storage location. However, there are costs associated with this current archiving technique that may cause an overall cost of the archive solution to exceed any cost advantage gained from storing the data offline.
These costs include the host based processing that is required to read the data from online storage and write it to offline storage. These costs also include the host based processing that is required to capture the metadata and store it in an inventory offline. Additionally, these costs include host based management of the offline storage. Further, these costs include maintaining an inventory that is comprised of metadata and the location of the archived file on the offline storage.
There is therefore a need to minimize or eliminate the costs associated with the aforementioned archiving technique.